The style of Zastrozzi is what drama critic Liz Kimberlin calls "darkly fun, perversely smart" theater that is is highly "theatrical," or emotive and dramatic. The style differs from Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1810 original, which Shelley composed as a novel. Walker's novel emphasizes the dark perversion, humor and theatricality that derives, but is different in style from, Shelley's Romanticism.